Anne Handled
by MrTyeDye
Summary: During gym class, Chandler decides to make Ronnie Anne the next target of his bullying. This proves to be unwise...


**Author's Note: This story was a request from DarthWill3. It takes place before the events of Relative Chaos.**

Bottom of the ninth. Two outs. Score tied at 6. Not a single soul on base.

Near the end of the semester, Coach Pacowski had decided to treat his students by taking them outside and letting them play a game of baseball during gym class. Ronnie Anne was placed on a team with Lincoln, Clyde, Zach, Rusty, Girl Jordan, Papa Wheelie and Joy. On the opposing team was Mollie, Liam, Flat Tire, Cristina, Richie, Lance, Penelope and... Chandler, the last of whom was constantly assaulting the opposing team with jeers and trash talk.

Ronnie Anne was undoubtedly their MVP, scoring three of their six runs and striking out countless batters. The few times she _did _strike out or drop a catch, it was because Chandler had successfully psyched her out with his taunts. Despite his best efforts, though, she managed to tie things up for her team, and now it was her chance to take the win. She was up to bat, and Liam - who had a surprisingly good arm, as she found out during that game - was pitching.

"You ready, lil' lady?" Liam asked with a sneer.

"Bring it, hillbilly," she responded, steeling herself and giving her bat a twirl.

Without another word, Liam reared back and launched the ball towards home plate. She gritted her teeth, swung the bat as hard as she could...

...and missed.

"Strike one!"

_Dang it_, she thought. _Gotta keep my eye on the ball._

Pacowski returned the ball to Liam, who wound up for a second pitch. This time, Ronnie Anne made a concentrated effort to focus on the ball. Sensing that it was a hair out of her strike zone, she stood still and let it fall into Pacowski's glove.

"Strike two!"

_What?!_

She twisted her body backwards, glowering at the coach. "Are you kidding me?! That was a ball!"

Pacowski just shook his head. "That's not what I saw. You've got one more chance."

Ronnie Anne growled, twisted herself back towards the mound and gripped the bat tight. _No more messing around_, she thought. _You've got one more chance. It's now or never._

Liam, satisfied with his success thus far, did a sassy little shoulder shimmy before winding up for the final pitch. While he was dawdling, Ronnie Anne glanced back towards the bench, and saw Lincoln giving her the biggest smile he could - a smile that oozed with confidence and pride. On instinct, she smiled back and gave him a shy little wave - although the moment didn't last long before she had to force her head back into the game.

_Okay, that's enough, _she thought. _Can't let him distract you. Stay on task._

She snapped her head forward and her eyes locked onto the ball, refusing to let it pass out of sight. The time for fishing for balls had passed, and she resolved to put every ounce of her energy into her next swing. Liam reared back, chucked the ball forward as hard as he could, and...

_**CRACK**_

The sound of her bat colliding with the ball was so piercing and sharp that several of her teammates flinched. Right after the impact, her eyes snapped open and darted around the field, looking for any sign of the wayward ball. But it was nowhere to be seen.

It was, as they say, out of the park.

"HOME RUN!" hollered Coach Pacowski.

Ronnie Anne, shocked by her own power and precision, stood there on home plate with her mouth gaping open for a spell. Once the shock wore off, she threw the bat to the side, pumped her fist in the air and started sprinting full-tilt around the bases.

But this turned out to be a mistake. Had Ronnie Anne paced herself, she might have noticed the third baseman sticking his leg out in front of her. Instead, her entire core was shaken when the obstacle collided with her shin, and her momentum sent her careening across the ground. A sickening _squish _was heard as her body sank into the moist, muddy surface. Once she came to a full stop, she cringed at the sensation of the mud clinging to her gym clothes and seeping into every opening.

"Nice slide, Ronnie!" called a haughty voice from behind her. _Chandler_. Before she could even pick herself up off the ground, she was assaulted by the sound of mocking laughter coming from Chandler and several other members of the opposing team.

Tears started to well up in her eyes. This wasn't _fair_. This was supposed to be her moment of glory, and Chandler tore it away from her. In an attempt to escape the sound of the laughter, she took off again, only to be stopped by a sharp pain shooting up her ankle, which she had apparently twisted during the first fall. Unable to keep her balance, she faceplanted into the mud a second time. This time, the mud slithered into her nose and mouth, making her gag on the wretched taste.

All the while, the other students continued to laugh and jeer at her. She sobbed, pounding her fists against the moistened ground.

"Now, come on, class, that's not nice," she overheard Pacowski say. His intervention did nothing to quell the laughter.

_Thanks a lot, coach_, she thought bitterly, spitting out mouthfuls of mud. The cacophony of her classmates' scorn continued to fill her ears as her ankle throbbed with pain. She rolled around on the ground, silently wishing that someone, _anyone _would care enough about her to at least help her to her feet...

...and then, suddenly, the laughter stopped. Curious, Ronnie Anne wiped the tears from her eyes, flipped herself around and sat up. What she saw left her staring in disbelief, mouth agape; the class was circling around Lincoln Loud, who was pinning Chandler to the ground and pounding him in the face again and again. Lincoln bared his teeth at the downed bully like a feral animal, while the veins in his forehead pulsated and splotches of red started to spread across his cheeks. Not only had she never seen him this angry, but until now she couldn't even _imagine _him this angry. What happened to that cute, dorky little shrimp she had come to know since the beginning of the year?

"THAT'S...NOT...FUNNY!" he screamed.

Against his better judgment, Clyde stepped in and tried to break them up; Lincoln just shoved him to the side and continued his assault.

"Lincoln, stop!" cried Ronnie Anne, her voice weak and hoarse. "You-you're gonna get in trouble! You..."

But her warning came just a moment too late. An incensed Coach Pacowski stepped in, grabbed Lincoln by the back of his collar and yanked him away. "All right, that's enough!" he said. "The two of you just earned yourself a one-way ticket to detention."

The coach, still holding onto Lincoln's shirt, effortlessly dragged him off of the baseball field while he thrashed about. All the while, the rest of the class stood around Chandler in an awed daze, stymied by what had just happened.

All of them, that is, except Clyde, who noticed that the scrappy young girl had yet to pick herself up off the ground.

"Are you all right?" he asked, running over to her side. She sniffled and wiped her eyes a bit before responding.

"I-I don't know," she said. "My ankle hurts. I don't think I can walk."

Without a second thought, Clyde draped her arm over his shoulder and hoisted her up into a standing position. "Come on, then. Let's get you to the nurse."

With that, he wrapped his arm around her waist and carefully walked her across the field back towards the school. They had only taken a few steps before a solemn-looking Liam caught up with them.

"I'm awfully sorry 'bout what happened," he said. "You got that run fair n' square. Wasn't right of 'im to take it from you."

"S'alright," she muttered, waving him off. "Wasn't your fault."

As Clyde and Liam walked her back, the image of Lincoln tearing into Chandler like a wild animal played in her head on loop. It was almost as if he had transformed into a different person at that moment; this was the same boy, after all, who tried to stand up to her bullying by giving her a kiss. What could have provoked that level of anger?

...was it _her_? Did he really care that much about her?

_Yeah, right. As if any boy would. _

After a few minutes, Clyde dropped her off with the nurse, who gave her a set of clean clothes and examined her ankle. Thankfully, the injury wasn't anything serious, although she would have to spend the next few days with her foot in a splint. After everything that had transpired, though, her ankle was just about the last thing on her mind.

She heard through the grapevine that Chandler and Lincoln would both be detained an hour after school that day - Chandler for tripping her, and Lincoln for starting the fight. They would, of course, be held in separate classrooms.

Ronnie Anne called her mother to tell her that she'd be staying after school to study and get some homework done. This wasn't technically a lie, since she did plan on spending a bit of time in study hall. What she really wanted, though, was some form of closure with Lincoln. Why did he do it? Where did that rage even come from? Had he been hiding it from her all this time?

After polishing off her math and earth science homework, she took a walk over to Lincoln's homeroom, where she waited outside the door for his detention to end. She paced back and forth across the hall as the minutes ticked by, eager to ask him questions about the incident - and just a bit fearful of what the answers would be.

At long last, the doorknob clicked and the door swung open. Lincoln ambled out the door with his head down and his hands in his pockets.

"You're free to go," Mrs. Johnson called from within the classroom. "I hope you've learned your lesson."

Lincoln just mumbled some half-formed, unintelligible response and walked away from the door. It wasn't long before an anxious-looking Ronnie Anne caught up to him.

"Oh, hi, Ronnie Anne."

"H-hey, Lam...Lincoln." After what happened, the tomboy couldn't quite bring herself to call him "Lame-O", as she usually did.

"What are you doing here? They didn't give you detention, did they?"

"Oh, n-no. I was just studying. And, you know, doing homework."

"Oh. Okay, then."

Lincoln just shrugged and continued to trudge forward. Ronnie Anne sighed, knowing full well that she'd have to work harder to get anything out of him. Though she usually had no trouble approaching him, the mental image of him laying into Chandler was giving her pause.

Regardless, she wasn't ready to give up - not even close. She took a deep breath, steeled herself, and continued.

"But listen, it was- it was really cool, what you did. Standing up for me. No one's ever done that for me before."

This prompted the sullen boy to stop in his tracks and turn his face towards her. She flinched, but quickly recovered and kept talking.

"So, basically - that is, what I'm trying to say is, you know... thank you."

Lincoln managed a small smile, showing off that cute little overbite that Ronnie Anne had always adored. "Well, you're welcome, Ronnie Anne. You know, I-"

He lost his smile as soon as he caught sight of her shoeless, splint-covered foot. "Oh, geez. What happened to your foot?"

"I twisted it," she said with a shrug. "Don't worry about it. The nurse said it'll be fine."

"If you say so," he replied, giving her a wary look. At this point, they had reached the end of the hallway and arrived at the doors to the courtyard. Lincoln shoved the door open and held it for the injured tomboy.

"Thanks again, Lincoln," she said as she shimmied past him. As she did, Lincoln noticed her gaze lingering on him; in her eyes, he noticed a tinge of worry.

"What's the matter?" he asked as he let the door close behind him. "It looks like you've got something else on your mind."

"I do," she admitted. "It's about what you did to Chandler. It was cool, don't get me wrong, but..."

She shrunk away from him, clasping her hands in front of her. "...I'll be honest, Lincoln. It was also a little scary."

Lincoln's eyebrows popped up. "Scary? _Me_? Are you serious?"

"You looked like a wild animal!" she cried, making him flinch from the sudden spike in volume. "You looked like... like you were going to _kill _him!"

He knit his brow, cringing at the thought of his friends seeing him in such an animalistic state. "That bad, huh?" he asked, to which she responded with a nod.

"Gosh, I didn't even realize it," he said as his eyes drifted away from hers. "I was just... I think something snapped in me."

His apprehensive frown curdled into a bitter grimace. "Chandler thinks that he can get away with anything. I'm sick of watching him push other people around and put them down for no reason. On most days I can force myself to put up with it, but today he went too far."

Ronnie Anne raised an eyebrow at him. "Too far?" she asked. "What, just because he picked on _me_?"

"Well, of course," he said, sounding a bit incredulous. "You mean a lot to me. I don't want to see you hurt."

The young tomboy blushed as a swarm of butterflies awakened in her stomach. Mere moments later, a second swarm emerged when Lincoln wrapped his arm around her and started guiding her towards the front steps.

"Speaking of which, let me help you down."

He held on tight and he helped her down the flight, one step at a time, making sure that she wasn't putting any pressure on her injured foot. Once they reached the ground, he let go and took a moment to catch his breath. Ronnie Anne chuckled, amused by his lack of stamina.

_Ah, now that's the Lame-O I know. _

Feeling much more at ease, she let him walk her across the courtyard towards the school parking lot, where Vanzilla was waiting for him. (Bobby was running a few minutes late, as per usual.) Lincoln was a bit tentative approaching the vehicle, expecting that he'd have to spend the ride home getting an earful from his mother. To his relief, the driver's window rolled down to reveal Lori.

"Mom says she'll want to have a talk with you when you get home," said Lori. "But don't worry; the girls and I all have your back."

Lincoln smiled, gave her an appreciative nod and reached for the door, only to be stopped by Ronnie Anne grabbing his arm.

"Eh? What's up, Ronnie Anne?"

He looked back to see her gazing at him, sporting a warm smile and a shimmering pair of eyes.

"Thanks again," she said, sounding a little hoarse. "You really came out for me today."

Lincoln returned the smile, feeling a glimmer of pride and satisfaction. His smile widened as he saw her lean in towards him, with her arms outstretched. Enchanted, he mimicked her movement, coming in closer and closer as he reached his arms around her waist...

...only to see her pull away at the last second and flick him in the forehead.

"But you're still a nerd," she said with a smirk. "Smell you later, Lame-O."

Lincoln giggled a little, in spite of himself, and gave her a wave goodbye before hopping into the van. Ronnie Anne waved back as she watched Vanzilla peel out of the parking lot. As soon as the vehicle left her line of sight, she released a blissful sigh and let a wide, dreamy smile spread across her face.

_That Lincoln..._


End file.
